


I Thought I Might Try Saying Yes

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Series: Fence Sitter [21]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 17:39:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9776777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Fence Sitter - Final ChapterTwenty-nine-year-old Micah was gently strongarmed into watching Luis and Raul for a few weeks while Mestre takes Tia on a long-overdue holiday. The boys will arrive in two hours - plenty of time for a little role-playing.Once the boys arrive, Raul is Raul and Luis opens up.But when they go home, there are some decisions to be made.





	1. Chapter 1

There were two more hours before the boys would be here for not one but two weeks. I was not about to waste a minute of the remaining time.

The place was ready for them. Mainly because Richard lent us his Game Boy for the week. Thanks to Danny who convinced him to. After that, the only thing that had to be done was to move the twin bed (for Raul) and the larger bed (for Luis) from my old place to their rooms upstairs. Food shopping was done. And any secret supplies we had tucked in folds of couches and chairs, in drawers and all those handy places that gave us easy access to whatever we needed were removed and taken to our room. Except, of course, for those few items that I had immediate plans for. 

Dante would be home any second. 

Little did he know I had a last minute inspiration that led me to drop by my favorite store on the way home. Where I might have purchased one or two things. And after a lengthy shower, I might have put them on. I might have selected a playlist to match my mood — and the mood I wanted him to have as well. I might have suctioned a new crystal jelly (it had bumps!) to the flat surface of the kitchen chair that now sat in the center of our living room. 

I had just done my final sweep of the room to make sure everything was in order when a car drove into our driveway. His car. 

When the car door slammed, I had a slight panic. What if he wasn’t alone? Oh, my god. That would be exactly the kind of thing that Dante might do. He’d get so excited for their visit that he’d _save the extra trip_ and pick them up early. That would be terrible. They’d be scarred for life. 

No. 

_I_ would be scarred for life. 

I peeked out the window. No kids. Okay. Fine. _Whew_. Panic averted, I returned my attention to the plan I dreamt up this afternoon.  Who said it wasn’t romantic to open the door lubed up and ready to go?

No one.

That’s who.

The keys jingled just outside. I didn’t wait for him to slide the key in the lock. Instead, I twisted the handle, inched the door open, peeked around open edge of the door and over the set of black-framed nerd glasses (these were an important part of my outfit, to be sure). To get into character, I tilted my head as if I hadn’t quite expected him to be standing there, I blinked in rapid motion and asked, “Are you the professor that’s here to help me with my assignment?” 

“Um. Micah?”

“Oh. You know my name. That’s good. Did the agency give it to you?”

A look of understanding flickered over his face. “Yes,” he answered. “The agency sent me. To help you with a …an assignment.”

I cracked open the door far enough for him to slide through (which he did) and told him, “I guess you better come in then. I’ve only booked you for one session. Um. What should I call you, sir? Oh…should I call you _sir_?”

Dante’s eyes twinkled with amusement and he poked his tongue into the side of his cheek, making it poke out, “Yes, I like this. You should call me sir.”

“Okay, _sir_. So, I have everything laid out. But…um…[my eyes blinked rapidly]…perhaps I should take your bag?” I lifted his computer bag from his grip and propped it out of the way against the wall.

Today’s inspiration came from watching him dress for his department meeting this morning. Though it was summer, and he wouldn’t be teaching, he presented himself as if he were. His button up shirt was blue and white gingham, topped with a black tie, tucked into new jeans, and belted in black leather that matched his loafers. It was all very…teacher-y in a totally made-up, no-teacher-of-mine-had-ever-looked-like-this-or-ever-had-this-affect-on-me ever before.

Ever.

Like never-ever. 

Exactly how Dante’s students should think of him like this. Never. Ever.

Only me. 

Forever and ever.

_Wait. What?_

I was just laid flat by my own thought. Really. Forever? It was the type of thought that appeared more and more frequently. I tucked the idea away for later consideration. I had to get back to, might I say, more pressing needs.

“What are you wearing?” asked Dante, his mouth had tilted up to one side and he placed his hand flat at the top of my chest and slowly swept down the midline of my body. When he got south of my belly button, he ran that same hand round the back of my hip and down just a bit further to explore whether there was any fabric covering my back side. His eyebrows popped up and I knew that he knew that, nope — there really wasn’t much of a covering back there. “Now, turn around and let me see you.”

“What…this old thing?” I asked — my question was cheesy and clich é as all get out — and performed a coy twirl against the backdrop of electronic dance music to show off my outfit. The sheer black mesh short-shorts ( _sans le derrier_ _é_ ) were detailed in sturdy, bright orange elastic and didn’t really _need_ the red suspenders to hold them up but I thought they added a little something. So did the red and orange plaid bow-tie around my neck. As did the nerdy black glasses, which perfectly matched my new silicone butt plug with handy finger pull.

Ha. It wasn’t meant to be a joke. But it was kind of funny, right? _Hand_ -y. _Finger_ -pull.

_Sigh_.

“ _Tico_ ,” Dante groaned, “You’re gonna kill me with this one day.” He stopped me on the second twirl, wrapped his hands around my waist and, pressed his legs against mine, one at a time, to walk me to the mirror so he could see me from the front and feel me from the back. “So,” he said and, not for one second did he release my eye contact, kissed along my neck and asked, “would you tell me exactly what’s happening here?”

My nod was terse. “Well, you see. I’m just an innocent young man and I’ve never…had anything up [I cleared my throat] _there_ before.”

His eyebrows shot up, “No?”

I imagined a halo above my head and responded accordingly. “No. And…you see…I’m quite desperate to know what it’s like to … you know … have a man that way. And, I think you’ll be very happy to know that I’m quite a good student.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I’ve read so much about it.”

“I see.”

“So, I bought a few toys and started to practice.”

“You did?”

“I _did_. And I was able to get lil’ Buford in with no problems whatsoever,” I announced.

“Lil’ Buford?” Dante’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. 

I arched my back and indicated that he should look down. Which he did and, with a twitch of his lips, hooked a finger into the silicon loop, and gave it a gentle tug. 

“So, you can see that I have the foundations down. However,” I continued and gave him more blinky eyes, “when it came time to move over to Brutus…”

“Brutus?”

To answer him, I pointed to the chair in the middle of the room where the sun refracted through the upstanding, beaded toy and he bit down on his lip in amusement and acknowledgment. I wondered if he’d comment on how I named these treasures or, indeed, that I had decided to name them at all. 

But he didn’t; he just went with it.

“So, I’m here to help you with Brutus?” He asked, and continued kissing my neck, sometimes moving up to my ear, which fucking undid me, and, with the web of each thumb, he pushed each suspender in to scrape back and forth along the plump pink part of my nipples until they perked up. 

“Uh huh,” I panted, looked down, pressed back, noted that my nipples weren’t the only two things that stood at attention. “To be honest, _sir_ , I’m a little intimidated by it. I thought that perhaps if you showed me first…”

Yes. 

Showed me.

The shows he put on for me were un-fucking-believable. Most people didn’t realize this but there was an entire section of heaven dedicated to watching Dante Te Waero writhing on a chair, head thrown back, dick swinging up and down, helpless to stop itself since his hands were used elsewhere for support. 

The first time he did this — put on a show for me — was in his San Francisco apartment that one summer. I thought it was odd that he wasn’t sore after the first few times we were together. Because…even if good, even if careful, even if without a foot-long-schlong, it kinda hurts. It wasn’t my ego asking (I swear!) but if I was his first, then, of course, I was concerned. And because having a dick and being one were not the same thing, I asked him about it. But, he was fine. Just because he hadn’t had a flesh-and-blood man in him did not mean he was a first-timer where ass play was involved. 

I was introduced to his small collection of dildos and plugs and vibrators of differing shapes and sizes. His favorite had a suction cup at its base would stick to a surface — a chair, a wall, the floor. And when he showed me what he liked to do with the toy, it became my favorite as well. So, I stood corrected. Then, I sat corrected. Then, I sat beguiled. 

And the rest was history. In a “ _yeah, it took us years to get back here”_ sort of way. But enough of nostalgia. There was a dildo suctioned onto a chair. And it looked so forlorn…you know, all the way over there, all by itself.

_Thwack!_

I yipped (yipped!)

Dante had taken it upon himself to stretch the elastic of my suspenders so they’d simultaneously snap back onto my now hard (and very sensitive) nipples. 

“Ow,” I pouted, “what was that for?”

He tongued one of them and then the other, as if in apology (but not really). “That’s cheating.”

“Nooo — I don’t believe you. That was so undeserved. How is that cheating?” I asked, still smarting even though what he was doing with his soft mouth was very nice and (almost) made it better. 

“If I found out one of my students hired someone to do something for them instead of doing it themselves, I would fail them.”

Now I pinched _him_. Exchanged the favor, if you will. It was through the fabric but I twisted. “Ow!” he barked, slapped away my hand and brought his forearm up to protect his chest. “What was _that_ for?”

“For thinking you would do this with one of your _students_. Plural. There is only _one_ student. That is me and…” I shook my head in a manner that could have been taken as haughty, “paid a lot of money for your time today.”

“To who?”

“The agency.”

“What agency?”

“The.”

“What?”

“The Agency. There is only one.”

He chuckled and his belly shook against me. “Just like there is only One Student?”

“Exactly.”

“How much did you pay them?”

“A lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

“All of it. Every dollar that’s ever been printed.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You paid _all the money_ to see me sit on a dildo?”

“Yes.” 

“Why?”

“It’s a good dildo, _sir_.”

“I see,” he hummed in agreement, though he remained unconvinced of the validity of this arrangement. I couldn’t see how. It was a good argument. And besides, what was he doing?Pushing back on logic at a time like this? Ridiculous. He couldn’t be procrastinating. Could he? That was _my thing_. 

And our limited time was wasting.

“You talk to much,” I blurted and reached for his belt buckle to back-feed the leather from the burnished metal. To which he grabbed the back of my hair and tilted my head toward him, “This first,” he demanded and kissed me. He did so definitively, in the way Fats Waller wrote about, as if he also knew Dante, had the pleasure of him, and like me, had been kissed in a way that made him _stay kissed_. 

He kissed me as we stood here. He kissed me as I backed him into the center of the room. He kissed me while he stroked my back, squeezed my ass, and hooked his finger (again) into the lil’ Buford’s hoop, teasing me with gentle pulls. He didn’t stop until I forced him to, until I forced the distance between my mouth and his, with my mouth being otherwise engaged with the new place in front of me. Now that I was on my knees and all. Now that his fly was open. Now that I’d freed his cock and balls (nothing else) from the confines of his clothing. 

I was determined to keep him dressed as much as possible, protesting, and gripping his hand with mine to stop him when he attempted to loosen his tie, unbutton his shirt, or shove his pants down. 

“For Brutus,” he said (I dare said, it was a hell of a war cry) and, now that his fingers were wet with lube, handed me the open bottle and watched me in the mirror as I reached through his legs to slick up the dildo just behind and underneath him. Then he said, “Watch,” and he turn around, bent over to grab the back of the chair with one hand, and worked himself with the other, running his fingers (first one, then two) in circles, flirting with his entrance. Would he enter himself? He would, he wouldn’t, he was, he wasn’t. He started with the tip of a pinky.

I pulled his dick back through his legs, mouthing it and his balls, not removing my eyes from what he was doing for a second. “I love it when you watch me,” he said. I caught his glance in the mirror to my right and make sure he saw me sink my teeth into the perfect globe of his ass. I was rewarded with a throaty laugh before he lowered his head. Presumably, he closed his eyes to concentrate on his first penetration — the first muscle and then the second and back. And again…the first muscle and a pause for the second. He kept one finger in place and added a second. 

He exhaled. Then, he sighed and proceeded to finger fuck himself. Slowly at first. Each movement and his flesh gave way. I spread his ass with my splayed hands, inadvertently pushing him forward. He pressed back and arched, working the muscles of his flexors, his rotators, his adductors, his abductors, his psoas, every muscle that allowed for the subtle push and pull and circular rotation his lower back and hips and thighs and pelvis. Even his ribs lifted up and out of his diaphragm (as I could see when I lifted his shirt), which showed off the moving cross-hatch pattern made by muscles that skated over his bones.

I wanted to fuck him.

Under normal circumstances, I would do exactly that. He was ready for me. But that wasn’t the plan.

Not today.

I got back into character, “Show me, _sir_. I want to see.” Dante twisted and looked down on me, “Do you?”

“Yes, please,” I said, using my best manners.

He went to spread his legs but his pants (which I wouldn’t let him take down) bound him, requiring him to sit with his legs almost pressed together. A challenge, to be sure. But I knew how the angle would affect how the toy would hit him. He would have to arch more. In the beginning, at any rate. I held the toy in position as he lowered his body, his weight distributed between one hand on the back of the chair, one hand on my shoulder, and, to a lesser degree, his legs.

Slowly, slowly, slowly.

He silently spoke the same thing. Whether it was my instruction or his own, I didn’t know. Probably both. I went back to watch as him open, to cover first bead and paused, just briefly, followed by a rapid release when the second muscle allowed entry. He came back up. He did it again. And again. And did little, little, tiny, bounces. The muscles of his thighs would soon shake from exertion. 

“Are you watching?” he asked me with open, glassy eyes and a matching mouth and proceeded to descended over another bump. _Pulse, pulse, pulse_. And another. And a pause. In this way, he took them all until it was seated, and he was seated, and the skin of his balls pulled tight between the pressure of the seat underneath him and the thighs to either side. Gently, I lifted them out of discomfort. And I licked them. And planted little kisses. And rubbed my lips over them and up his shaft while he started to grind.

_Hot._

Oh, god, he was hot.

I wanted to watch him, touch him, taste him, ride him. But he had other ideas, “Now you do it. Get yourself ready?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Show me.”

So I did.

I bent myself right over, legs in a wide V, and grabbed the cushion of the sofa in front of me. “Slide the plug in and out, _tico_ ,” he told, the wood of the chair beneath him complained with a low squeak and a muted _thud_ as one of the legs that had lifted up from the carpet dropped back down. “Keep that fat part going through your hole. _Fuck_. Yes. Like that. Do you have anything bigger?” 

Of course, I did. He hardly had to ask. It was right here. 

“Put your leg up,” he instructed and, I could tell from the shift in his tone, his growing impatience, the sharp pronunciation even with his shortest words, that in thirty hot seconds, he would soon get bossy with me. Which I loved. Especially, if there was manhandling involved. Not just any manhandling. Bossy manhandling. Insistent manhandling. I-need-you-right-fucking-now manhandling.

A hallmark of our relationship, the one between Dante and I, the one between  _Palhaço_ and _Urso Polar_ — and perhaps it could be argued that it was not our _Mestre_ that seen our nature and named us so but that we had grown into our names — was that he, _The Jokester_ , remained composed, well-mannered, even civilized even as he found that sensitive piece of me to be poked. He would prod it over and over again. A cat who found a loose string in a sweater that needed to be pulled. A child who shook a perfectly wrapped present. A ringmaster equipped with a whip, one who still directed not just the ceremonies but the performance, who was in charge of riling an audience into a frenzy while he maintained fastidious self-control. 

As such, he liked to manipulate my moods. I could only imagine the things that crossed through his mind. _Would it annoy Micah to unhook the top loop of the cord on an otherwise perfectly wound vacuum cleaner? Could I get him to give me a two-minute blowjob (I had a timer. It would be right here, in a hidden section the store) out of conceding that the bright yellow sequined pillows that I wanted really, really badly (ha!) didn’t go with our decor? If the milk was moved to a different spot in the refrigerator, will it have returned to its original spot before dinner? Would Micah become unhinged if the week promised to watch the boys extended to two?_ The answer, of course, was yes. Yes, yes, yes, and a million more times yes. All of this amused him. 

It was never cruel.

More often than not, I would laugh as well. Though that would come later.

But.

Sometimes — and when I said _sometimes_ , I meant on the rarest of occasions — I would get my own back. Inadvertently or not, I would find one of his spots that — _poke, poke, poke_ — would cause him to relinquish his calm. There would be a silent reveal of a weakness (of sorts), a sensitivity, a loose string that — _pull, pull, pull_ — would make him come undone.

I found one. 

A singularity.

One that won’t exist again. Not in this mood, in this form, in this costume. Time would fix that. This moment was singular. There was nothing for it but to take speedy advantage of my advantage. 

Because I loved him. 

Because it was hot.

Because I could.

All of which were immensely satisfying.

So I returned the favor. _Dante, do you like to watch as I open myself up for you? Does it get you hard? Did a perfect drop of cum squeeze out of you? Are you using it to stroke yourself?_

And.

_Oh, did you want something?_

_Did you need me to sit on your cock? Does it frustrate you to no end if I pause while you sit there, holding yourself perfectly positioned so that all I needed to do was drop down a centimeter? What if I waited it for no other reason to lengthen your anticipation? No, that wasn’t enough to make you lose your cool._

_What if I got up and changed positions?_

_What if I wanted to face you? On this little chair? Why, yes. Just watch me._

_Do you think I didn’t know how it felt to be filled from behind while I slowly lowered myself on you — bare and hard and lubed? Oh, did you need me to move?_ _Need, need, need._ He was so beautiful with wanting me. His eyes were quicksand but today I was prepared. I knew the terrain. And I had rope.

The outsides of my feet were jammed up against the back posts of the chair and my toes curled (as they would be) over the sides. His hair, my handles, were what I used to keep his face tilted up to see every emotion wash over it. His hands on my ass hauled me in with each thrust, to provide greater traction, a feint of control, friction.

It was me riding him. He knew this. It was me fucking him on this chair. Me riding his ass as much as mine. I used his tie as a singular rein and did nothing to stop the graze of his zipper against the back of my upper thigh. It would burn later. I didn’t care.

“ _Tico_ ,” he keened (that voice!). His neck muscles flexed, making his neck thicker, making his Adams apple point straight up. I wrapped my lips around it. Then I bit his chin. Why not? He could take it. “I want to come. I’m going to…”

I squeezed my insides around him. Then I did it again. I did it every time I seated myself on him, with his every thrust. His every out-of-control, writhing, pulsing, pressing, desperate, lilting, weighty, off-kilter, gorgeous, helpless thrust. I did it until he cried. Until he throbbed. Until he bent his head into my neck and pulled me into him as he shook and jerked and broke out, anew, with sweat.

See? Satisfying.

He kept me close, crushing me, and stood (how did he do that?) only to topple the both of us on the sofa a few feet away. I was on my back, my ass hung off the cushion edge, when he withdrew. Only to replace himself with the last dildo I had in me, only to swallow me, only to remind me that I wasn’t the only one between us that could make the other lose control.

_God, this was good._

The suction, the speed, the heat of his mouth were relentless. Add that to what he did to my ass — the change in angle, the rotations, the meticulous attention to that astounding spot inside me that made me want to explode. But it was only the I-already-thought-I-was-there feeling only to have it build more. I wanted to. But not yet. Then I wanted to _more._ But my body, in all of it’s wisdom threatened to edge me. Or was this Dante, who again was the ringleader? Or was it both? 

How mean!

How could the two of them turn on me like this?

I wanted him to snap my suspenders against my skin again. To bite me. To skate his nails along my sides. _Come on_ , I told myself, distorting my body on top of the couch, squirming, grasping fruitlessly to the fabric behind me in response to — among other things — the soft sweep of his hair that spanned over my stomach and hips. I gripped the pair of my nipples and pulled in an attempt to calm my thrashing. Did I succeed? I had no idea. These last few moments were always horrendous. I could no longer stand to be in my skin. 

_Make it stop_.

But also.

_For fuck’s sake, do not stop._

La petite mort, my ass. He was either going to kill me permanently or leave me so that I was feeble in perpetuity. 

_I couldn’t._

I couldn’t what? I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. Fuck this. Fuck him. Fuck me. But he was fucking me. With his hand on my dick. With silicone in my ass. With his teeth in my thigh.It was marvelous. Horrifically, wonderfully, terribly, disastrously marvelous. And when I came, I stopped breathing. Just for a moment. The blood, my blood, stored up around my body, rushed up to the surface, my overwrought net of capillaries near bursting, saved from this demise by my release. My all-over-myself-and-hopefully-not-the-couch-beneath-me release. Because even then I was aware how soon we would have visitors. Small ones. 

Alas, we still had time. Thirty minutes at minimum before we needed to go. Plenty of time to appreciate how the ceiling, usually white, swam in glorious technicolor.

Dante said something.

I didn’t know what.

How could I?

I was too busy melting.

There was a rapping at the door. It was followed by a lighter knock and our doorbell ringing. After a simple triplet, these were followed by the same again. This time with a riff —Shave and a Haircut (Two Bits) — and a little, familiar voice calling out, “ _Polar_!”

_Oh, crap!_

Instant panic and not just mine. 

“Give us a minute,” hollered Dante. I grabbed paraphernalia, unsticking the jelly from the chair, grabbing the open bottle of lube (and inadvertently squeezing so it ran over the top and all over my hand), squeezing my ass cheeks together, all while Dante tucked in his shirt, pulled up his pants, dragged the chair back to the kitchen (and hopefully off to the side where we could clean it before putting it back with the kitchen table). 

With one last look around the room (how the hell did we prevent wet spots?), I ran upstairs. Toys were dumped into the bathtub. I showered, dried, and reintroduced to normal clothing in record time. I was back downstairs, pulse still racing, only to see Raul run from the living room to the kitchen to set his his paws up against the glass of the french doors to the back yard, “I wanna see the rabbits. _Colher_ said you had rabbits.”

Bernadette licked her lips in apology and said more quietly, “To be fair, he didn’t actually said you _had_ them. Just that you may have been _acting_ a bit like them.”

Luis, the little shit, had the gall to snicker.


	2. Chapter 2

_Someone was here._

That was the thought running through my head when I jerked awake, heart pounding. Why did I think that? I asked myself, frozen, claustrophobic, despite the expansive darkness around me. Was it a sound that woke me? A feeling? A shadow? It wasn’t the dream. I would have remembered that. This didn’t feel like a panic attack. No. I was certain. We weren’t alone.

And when a light clicked on downstairs, in the distance, I recalled that we weren’t supposed to be. The boys. Could it be one of them?

I reached for my phone and checked the time. One something. Late. Dante was fast asleep. So much so that he didn’t so much as twitch or murmur when I extracted myself, threw on some jeans, and went downstairs.

Luis.

He was the lurker. And he was currently in pj bottoms and a hoodie, bent in half, examining an open refrigerator for the goods. If I had to guess, he’d been there a while. “Hey,” I started, then he started, slamming the door and spinning around as he launched into an apology, “I didn’t take any, I swear.”

“You’re alright, Luis. Need something to eat?”

His eyes were still wide when his stomach rumbled and when he collapsed his hands around the source of the sound (as if they could quiet the hunger), the _no_ he began to say turned into, “Maybe?”

I nudged him to the side (but not out of the way) so we could look together. “Okay, we can have sandwiches, cereal, or…” I bet he could do with someone warm. I pulled out the carton of eggs, “how about if I make some of these and you put the toast on.” Luis surveyed the 3 unopened loaves and the bag of bolillos and eyed the cinnamon swirl with raisin bread even as he reached for the whole wheat. Before he opened it, I mused, “Hm. Now that surprises me. I heard cinnamon swirl was your favorite.”

“Yeah, but…”

I smiled and shook my head while tossing the last of the egg shells into the compost bin, “Have what you want, Luis. There’s plenty of everything.” Luis opened the cinnamon bread, folded down the end piece, and reached in to grab a stack of four slices, which went right into the toaster. “What do you want on it — peanut butter [ _ew_ ], butter [ _hmmm_ ], jam [ _what kind?_ ] or cheese?”

“Cheese?” he asked and watched the eggs as they slid into the hot pan in front of me, where the bottom layer lightened into more opaque shade of yellow before the first bubble formed. I swept through the pan with a wooden spoon to break the solids into large curds and stopped to allow the remaining liquid to cook through. “A slice of sharp cheddar. It’s good, Luis. I swear.”

“Not buying it,” he scowled and put all options (minus the peanut butter) on the table before he dug out pairs of forks and knives.

“So, what does _Tia_ do?”

“What do you mean?”

“For late-night snacks. I mean, she’s got a whole house of growing kids. This can’t be the first time some got hungry in the middle of the night.”

“Wait…but, didn’t you grow up there?”

I shook my head, “No. I lived at home until I was sixteen and then I moved out.”

“But you…ah…I’ve seen photos with you in your whites,” he protested. The kids in our group were, for the most part, foster kids. These days, the people who had grown up in the circle had kids of their own. I hadn’t really thought about it before but, yeah, I was pretty much the only minor at the time who had to make my own way to class.

“Yeah. I met _Mestre_ when I was thirteen — just a bit older than you.”

“But…you said that you went through what I did. Didn’t you?”

Finally, I cottoned on to why he was confused. “Yes. Well, my situation was a bit different than yours. Some of the things that happened to us when we were younger were the same but the situation was different.”

“It wasn’t your dad?” he asked his eggs and ran a fork over them, swallowing without having speared any.

“My coach,” I said and noted his understanding. “There was some stuff with my mom before that. She used to get really mad. Explode, really. She’d go off on me.”

“She hit you?”

“Yeah. She had some problems. Still has them, I guess, but she’s been in treatment a long time. But the other thing — that was the coach.” Luis sneered, possibly thinking of his own baseball coach who had, like Bryan did for me, saw something special in him. I clarified, “Nick wasn’t my primary coach. He was the head of the gym and after he assaulted me, he tried to stitch Bryan — that was my real coach — up for it.”

“Wow.”

“I was fifteen when that happened. My home with my family wasn’t safe but…no, neither my dad nor my mom did that to me.”

“So, who was your you when you had to testify?”

“My lawyer? I didn’t have one. I thought the DA was my lawyer. He was the one going after the bad guy, right? I didn’t understand that he wasn’t my lawyer even when I was on the witness stand.”

“How was it different than when I went?”

“They treated me like an adult, for one. And, at the time, they weren’t as willing to make it easier for victims to testify. A lot has changed for the better since then,” I told him, having already mentioned some of the details when I prepared him for his own testimony. He knew, for example, that I gave my testimony in the main courtroom, facing my attacker. He didn’t know anything about what happened when I was cross-examined. “I fainted,” I blurted out, all of a sudden deciding it was okay to share more of my details.

Luis jerked his head up and stared right at me. “You _what_?”

“I fainted. The defense attorney was asking me pointed questions about my sexual identity and experience. These were questions that had nothing to do with the trial but he was using them to discredit my deposition. And me. Their job, you know, is to be really aggressive. But I didn’t see it coming. They were trying to establish doubt on the defendant’s guilt by saying my participation was consensual. I was shocked by it. Quite literally, I went into shock.”

“What does that mean?”

“I got halfway through the questioning and I fainted. After a long break, the cross-examination continued. Fortunately, the judge emptied the courtroom of everyone but the jury, the lawyers, the staff, and Nick. I was all over the place, though. I couldn’t keep up with the answers. We had to keep stopping.”

“How long were you there?”

“All day. I had to fly to Sacramento so I was up before five in the morning. By the time we were done, I barely caught my flight home. But for the month after that — maybe even longer — I was a wreck. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think. It was really traumatic.”

“What happened to the guy?”

“Oh, he got life. Actually, all three of them that ran the network did. I don’t even know why they called me. They had photos, video, DNA,” I said and added, “Scratch that. I know exactly why they hauled me up there. The prosecutor wanted to put a human face on it. And he succeeded. The fact that the defense attorney threw the victims under the bus only helped him make a better case.”

“Is that why you do what you do?” Luis asked, the crease in his forehead got deeper and his neck sunk into his shoulders.He took a grudging bite of buttered toast while he waited for my response.

It would be so easy to say _yes_ , that was exactly why I did it. That because I had a traumatic experience, I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through anything like it. But that wasn’t exactly the truth. It was just as true that I knew what it felt like to want justice. To feel like, somehow, I deserved it. Had a right to it. And to be played _again_ , to have the court happy to turn me into a victim for a second time for some larger purpose, as if I had signed up to me some martyr when I damn well hadn’t, was nothing short of a secondary violence.A needless one, in my opinion. There were, and are, better options for the necessary confrontations required to shine light on the truth.

That _still_ wasn’t all of why I did what I did. Just as accidents of time and place allowed for the bad things to happen, the same mechanism was in play for accidents of a better kind — the best kind of luck, I supposed — to take place. In my case, I was guided, to some degree, by _Mestre_ , by my school counselor, by the advocacy clinic I was able to get a placement in during law school.

How I could go in circles over this? Because on top of that was the part of me that made me think _fuck luck._ I had a colleague who was more open that I about her past experience. _Name it_ , she’d say even though she didn’t know that I, like her, could use the same description, _I am a sexual assault survivor_.

People liked to tell her that her having lived through what she did, in being a survivor, in finding her voice by doing this work, was a gift. She would smile at them (and I was glad to have never been the recipient of it) and proceed to advise (much more calmly that I would have) them on _the blessing_ she lived through and how she would recommend it to absolutely everybody. She had a similar speech on the wisdom of being a bastard but she saved that one for after they’d paid their final bill.

I would have thought I would have more clarity by now on why I did what I did. There were simply too many reasons. I did my best to put it all together for Luis, “Maybe that’s part of it. But, I’d like to think that I would still be doing this even without the past I happen to have. They say — don’t they — that this isn’t your fault. But I have yet to hear anyone really discuss what that means. It starts with where you were born and who you were born to.” I was babbling now, “Then there is this part of your personality. You know, the one you were born with. Then, it goes to whether you were raised to be confident or whether you have chinks in your armor.”

Luis stopped chewing on his eggs to ask, “What’s that mean?”

“The soldiers from a long time ago wore these solid metal suits. And if there was a gap or some damage, it made it easier for a sword or a spike to finish making a hole in the metal.”

“So, like…if you were raised with damaged armor, it’s easier for other people to get at you.”

“Yeah. I think so. The people who make good predators — if I can call them good — know how to read people. They know who hasn’t been fortunate. Sometimes, these are people close to us and sometimes these are people who get to know us on purpose.”

Luis’ nostrils flared.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” I apologized.

“I want to,” he blurted. “I mean, I go to the counselor dude and we talk and everything but sometimes it doesn’t seem real, you know? Like I’m in that office and it doesn’t feel like real life. I just…”

He paused, screwed up his mouth, and squinted. It was how I imagined I looked when there was a thought at the tip of my tongue and I couldn’t find the words to fit what I needed to say.

“Just what, Luis?” I asked. The kid was twelve and supposed to be starting sixth grade. At his age, I was a year or two away from having Tyrell back, competing in gymnastics at level eight, and functionally reading as someone two grades higher. Luis, on the other hand, was functionally illiterate. He wasn’t in school. His mother pulled him out during fourth grade, moved cross-country to be with the once-estranged father. It was a man, the mother decided, that was worth sacrificing her son’s autonomy for. Never mind his health, his well-being, his safety, his future, his love.

A year later, someone noticed that he hadn’t enrolled in school. That’s how they were caught.

Unlike me, he didn’t want to leave his parents. They didn’t deserve him. They remained unrepentant. For everything.

I looked down at Luis’ plate where there were once eggs and toast. “Do you want more?”

He shook his head.

Then he picked up his plate and mine and started to clean up. That was _Tia’s_ influence. I joined him, putting away the food first then standing to his right to dry the dishes he washed.

“ _Polar_?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you gay because of what happened to you?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Luis wipe his face with the inside of his wrist. His nostrils flared again. They were almost white along the ridge. His lips, too, were pale from squeezing them together.

“Nope. I’m gay — well, I’m not gay. I’m bisexual. And I’m bisexual because I’m attracted to women and men. Not because of anything that’s happened to me. It’s just who I am. Did someone tell you otherwise?”

He took a long inhale and gave a brief shake of his head.

“Is this something you spoke of with your counselor?”

Another shake.

“What do you talk about?”

“Whatever I want.”

“They don’t press you to talk about your feelings? Or what happened to you?”

Nothing.

“What about your nightmares?”

I already knew the answer. Telling how he didn’t correct me on the nightmares question either. Clearly, there was an imminent discussion to be had on finding a new therapist.

“Do you think you might be?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

Jesus. He was barely twelve. His voice hadn’t even dropped. I didn’t stop what I was doing nor did I ask him to look at me. It was easier to tell him this way, “So, I’m not sure if you know this but only a few people know they are gay or straight at your age. For most people, they’ll start thinking about it in their teens. Some people don’t know until they are in college. Others are totally grown up when they figure it out.”

I had a feeling I wasn’t being particularly helpful. And the reason I thought so was because he retreated further into his own skin. Maybe he needed something else. “Luis, there’s something that maybe you need to hear, okay?”

He glanced at me, then returned his attention to reaching over the sink with a kitchen towel to polish the chrome spigot.

“What happened to you wasn’t sex. It wasn’t affection. It was a physical and violent crime.”

His lip trembled and he wiped away another tear, “Is that why they won’t touch me?”

“Who, Luis? Who won’t touch you?”

“Everyone. You know. They’re always hugging on each other all the time. Like crawling all over each other and getting kisses good night. But like with me,” he said with his breath was shaky on the inhale, “I’m like diseased or some shit.”

Jesus, kid. Break my heart, why don’t you?

“I think that…well…knowing them, I bet they might be afraid of scaring you.”

“Why didn’t they just ask me?” he asked, the phlegm caused his voice to lower and warble.

“If I offered you a hug right now, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?”

Luis looked up at me, frowning, eyes wet with tears that could just about wash away the rest of him.

“You don’t have to say. You can just…I dunno…give me a secret signal like pull on your ear or stick out your tongue or…uh…flip me off or something.”

A grin broke through right before Luis proceeded to stick out his tongue, just briefly, hardly a flash of pink before it disappeared again.

“Excellent. So, I’m going to …no, you’re going to hug _me_ now, yeah?”

Luis inched closer and looked at me sideways until he got a foot away, at which point he changed his focus and zeroed into my sternum, where he would plant his forehead. His shoulders, the part of him that gave me most of the hug since his arms hung to his sides, took up two-thirds of my stomach. I was reminded of how large he projected himself to be because here, like now, like this, he was so small.

After a few moments, that same little body backed away as if to say, “that’s enough.”

I ruffled his hair and asked, “Are you ready to go back to bed or do want to play cards?”

“Cards?” he scoffed, “Dude. Who plays cards?”

“Me. That’s who.”

“Why don’t we watch TV or something?”

“I’ll never get to sleep if I watch TV. You ever played solitaire?”

“No,” he sounded skeptical.

“It’s chill,” I said, “I bet you’ll like it.” I walked into the living room to get a pair of decks. I had thought to come back to the kitchen but Luis had already shut off the light and settled onto the couch and under the blanket we kept there.

We sat side by side where I showed him how to shuffle a deck of cards by dividing into two sections, brought them close to each other, lifted one corner of each pile, and let them drop, one card at a time, where they mingled together with laminated _cthlacking_. He was so taken with it that took out the second pack to practice ( _cthlack_ - _cthlack_ - _cthlack_ - _cthlack_ - _cthlack_ ) while I set up the tableau.He continued to do so throughout the first game and shuffled cards in between pointing out combinations of nine, nineteen, and twenty-nine (we went slow) and asking more questions about my life from the time I was his age and all the way to now.

And he was curious about Dante. He began, “Beto says you’re happier now.”

“Oh yeah?” I pulled out a four of clubs, seven of spades, and eight of diamonds and noticed Luis, crease deepened again, twitching his fingers before the crease diminished and he was, apparently, happy with the way the numbers on the cards added up. It occurred to me that Luis found his way into our lives the same weekend that Dante returned to mine.

When I met Beto, I was with Jax, living with Danny, and, as an intern of the child advocacy clinic on campus, struggled more on filling out paperwork than on understanding what options he had available to him. Fortunately, there were people watching out for us. _Mestre_ for one. Professors for two. That first year, Beto had something to prove. He’d sit almost silently through his prep sessions and, later, his probation meetings. But in the _roda_ , he tried anything and everything to take me down. Then there was me, who thought that since I was representing him, I needed to treat him more gently than the others. As if that would either gain his respect or help him work his shit out. “So, what’d he say?” I prompted.

“He said that you used to be in your head all the time. And super uptight. Ha. He even told me how you used to try to lay out all these options for everything. Like you wouldn’t even go to a movie without having to figure out why you’d go see one and not the other five. And like you didn’t even talk through it but you’d have all your answers lined up in case someone asked you about it.”

In case someone asked me about it? Beto would grill me. On everything. Why are you doing this? Why won’t you do that? That kid could wind me up in two minutes flat. “And now? What does he say?”

“He just says you’re like…I dunno. More peaceful or something.”

“And Dante?”

“I don’t think he knows him so well. Not like _Colher_. You guys are all good friends, right? Like you went to high school together?”

“Yeah.”

“He thinks you’re getting married.”

“Who does?”

“ _Colher_.”

“Or maybe he’s so happy after getting married that he thinks everyone should do it.”

“Ha. Maybe. You don’t think about it?”

“Yeah, I think about it.”

“I thought that with the marriage equality thing, you guys would be the first ones to do it. Why haven’t you?”

“Dunno.”

“But … like … you already have a house together.”

“Yeah.”

“You even bought it and everything.”

“Yeah.”

“You want to, huh. I can tell. You’re just trying to play it all cool and stuff.”

Luis’ big ass grin and sparkly eyes said he had me all figured out. Maybe he did. “Yeah.”

“So when are you going to ask him?”

“Dunno,” I admitted and picked up two kings and a nine of hearts.

“Oh, nuh-uh. You are not telling me that Mr. Know It All hasn’t figured this out yet.”

“Mr. Know It All?”

“That’s you.”

“Hm…I’m definitely not that. What makes you think that I’m going to be the one to ask him?”

Luis pointed out an ace of spades and two fours. “Dude, you have to be the one to propose. You’d Romeo and Juliet the shit out of it.”

Now, there was some interesting phrasing. What did to _Romeo-and-Juliet-the-shit-out_ of something entail? And how had I gained his confidence to do such a thing? It was all so perplexing.

He went on, “Just think about it, _Polar_. I can totally picture you galloping up on a white horse with a rose in your teeth.”

I snorted and he shushed me. Then he made another suggestion, “Maybe you could just jump out of a cake or something. Don’t people do that?”

A high-pitched sound came out of my nose, though it didn’t stop me laughing. “Um. No?”

“Okay, okay. Here it is. You gotta do this one, alright?”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Flash mob.”

“What?”

“You know. You pick a song and all of us dance to it. Like we can do it in class and everything. Someone will cue up the tunes and the rest of us will breakout into Thriller or something.”

“Thriller?”

Luis rolled his eyes. “Okay, maybe not Thriller if you’re going to be asking your man to marry you but something catchy.”

I was silent for a moment.

“Aw, come on, _Polar_. It’ll be awesome. I saw it on Oprah,” he said definitively. Talk about surreal. There was a tough little kid sitting next to me getting excited about romantic proposals as seen on Oprah.

“Oprah?”

“She’s cool, man. Don’t judge.”

Luis pointed out an ace, a three, and a five. I picked them up. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

“Beyonce.”

“What?”

“Single Ladies. Definitely. That’s the one,” Luis urged. He was serious, too. “You don’t have to wear those little body suits or anything. That would be weird but I could totally teach you the dance.”

There was not once chance in hell I would engage in proposal-by-flash-mob but I hardly had the heart to tell him so. On top of that, we lost the game of solitaire. I gathered up the cards but Luis stopped me. “One more. Then we’ll go to sleep”

“Yeah, okay.”

He set up the cards. We played and talked and I couldn’t tell you who went to sleep first.

Next thing I knew there was an orange light that came through my eyelids and a tickle of hair on my cheek that me opening my eyes. The subsequent kiss had them closing again. “Good morning, _tico_. Did you sleep well?”

My grunt was non-committal but my hands around his neck weren’t. I wasn’t going to let him escape until I had my share of kisses. If he was next to the couch on his knees, kissing me like this, the boys weren’t in sight, so I let my hands wander up into his untucked t-shirt to explore his still bed-warm skin.

“ _Esse está muito gostoso,_ ” Dante said with a deep inhale followed by a hearty chuckle. He trapped my hands up over my head and kissed me into the cushions until two sets of feet thundered down the stairs. Dante rearranged the blanket over me and walked back to the kitchen with the promise of coffee when Raul leapt high and in my general direction.

“ _Polar, polar,_ ” he cried. I caught him just before his full weight made contact. “You are in such big trouble.”

“Why? What did I do?”

He toyed with the lettering on the front of my t-shirt and lamented, “You had a slumber party with Luis and you didn’t invite me. So…um…I think this is very unfair.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t a slumber party.”

He looked unhappy. More than unhappy. Pitiful. “But I came downstairs and you were both on the couch asleep without me. You made me sleep by myself.”

“Raul, it wasn’t like that. Luis had a nightmare, man. I heard him down here and I got up with him. That’s all it was.”

“I had a nightmare.”

Of course, he did. If someone wanted to see a movie, he wanted to see a movie. If someone had a birthday, he had a birthday. If I had told him that Luis got up because he was hungry, Raul would have also been hungry. Possibly dying of starvation. Calling him out on these didn’t do any good so I asked, “What was your nightmare about, champ?”

He looked up and searched the room, “It was about…um…it was about….robots,” and he proceeded to detail the storyline of one of the X-Box games I was vaguely familiar with.

“That’s horrible, Raul. Maybe you shouldn’t play any more video games for a while. Not if they give you nightmares.”

His eyes flew open and sounded downright offended by my suggestion and unsure where to take the conversation from here, “What?”

Poor dude looked traumatized. I thought maybe I could go easy on him. “Or…” I suggested while Raul looked at me with inky black eyes, his upper lip sucked into his mouth. He didn’t say anything while he waited for me to finish the thought. “Maybe we can get Luis and Dante to go to the park? Together, we can test your warrior skills. Maybe build up the ones you don’t have yet. What do you say?”

“Yup,” he said, lips pinched together, and considered this proposal seriously. “Okay,” he continued, “Yeah. Uh huh. That’s a good plan.”


	3. Chapter 3

The dropping of kids at _Tia’s_ became an event, just as we’d expected it to. The _we_ — in this instance — was Luis and I. We weren’t the first to arrive but we weren’t far off.  _Camaleao_ (Leland) and Julie had brought back K’von and Ed — who were already upstairs getting an X-box tournament together when we arrived. Luis and Raul ran down the hall and thundered up the stairs without so much as having dropped their bags in their respective rooms.

“Well,” noticed Julie with a dramatic huff as if she were offended by their behavior. She wrinkled her nose, sidled up to me, and said, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d said that Luis looks…” she grimaced as she said this “…happy?” Dante and I looked at each other and grinned. He’d noticed it, too. 

The day after our late night chat, Luis’ smile seemed easier. His face and shoulders were more relaxed. The permanent crease between his eyebrows was shallower. He leaned up against me or Dante like it was no big deal for him to do so. Raul picked up on this immediately and now tackled him on regular basis. A network of hairline cracks now ran across the expanse of the hard shell around him to let out hints of something other than the tough guy who put his head down, got on with business, didn’t raise his voice, and never made a scene. 

On cue, Luis barked a laugh, a distinctive one, short and sharp, that rang out in harmony with the other boys from upstairs. Someone must have killed a virtual something or other on one of the games.

_“Colher,”_ Dante called out from behind me and reached out to shake  Júnior’s hand while Beto shot me some side eye on the way to the tournament upstairs. Bernie sidled up for a sideways hug.

“What was that about?” I asked her and she looped her arm through my elbow to pull me aside. “It seems,” she said under her breath, “that your assistant might have brought in some help to make sure everything went _as planned_ for today?”

A high-pitched whimper escaped me and my pulse went sky high. “Wait? What? He promised to keep this _quiet_ ,” I hissed. Bernie’s lips disappeared between her teeth on my (shhh!) outburst. She glanced up at me through her eyelashes and released her lower lip from her teeth when she explained, “I know, Micah. But he explained this very clearly to us. You didn’t ask him not to tell anyone — only to keep it quiet. And…well… to him, this didn’t mean the same thing at all.” In her eyes, I saw my escape hatch blown to smithereens. It wasn’t like I was decided on doing it today. Not in front of everyone.

“And Beto? What’s up with him?”

“Well, he’s miffed.”

“At me? Why?”

“Because you didn’t ask him to help. Did you?” It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation.

“Beto wanted me to ask?”

“Micah.”

“What?”

“He’s your first kid.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyebrows went sky high. You know, where my pulse was. They hung out and had tea. In the meantime, she went on to ‘splain it to me. “Who was the first kid that you went to court with? After all that the two of you have been through together, he thought you might take him into your confidence more than the new kid.” 

_Oh._

She continued, “I’m not saying you did anything wrong. Just that he might be a little bit hurt that you asked Luis to help but you didn’t ask him.”

“But…”

“I know, baby. It just means he loves you and that you’re going to have to make it up to him.”

Dante knitted his eyebrows at me from across the room and squinted his eyes as if to say _what’s up_? I shook my head quickly to tell him it was _fine_ even though it was so not fine. Who knew that so many people needed to be consulted not just with life changing decisions but how to implement them? Not me. “I’m so bad at this,” I whined.

“Nope,” Bernie said and rubbed my back, “You’re just a man. You can’t help that shit.” Then she laughed off my withering look and left me to go say high to Marky and Bea, who’d just arrived with Stella and Pete, and within moments the two women were practically forehead-to-forehead and giggling in my general direction.

Space. That’s what I needed. I hauled Raul’s and Luis’ bags to their respective rooms to get a moment alone.

A moment was all I got. 

_Tia_ found me there putting away Raul’s clothes. She looked good. Relaxed. Better for having snuck in that second week of holiday. And with a knowing twinkle that meant that someone had let her in on _my_ secret. “Is there something you would like to tell me, _Polar_? Maybe you would like to ask me for some advice?”

_Advice?_ Why did I need advice? Honestly, there wasn’t much that I had to do. Other than doing it. This happened every day. _Oh, god._ I should check in with Luis. It would help to know who else knew. Then there was the _thing_ we put together— the whole set-up he helped me plan. I guess it wasn’t just Luis but an entire host of people that helped to put it together.

Did I actually, officially say to do it? 

I didn’t think I did.

Maybe _Tia_ knew? I felt sick. I was going to be sick. I was going to faint and that would be that. I already felt pale. I should go home. That’s what I needed. A long nap. Yes, that would do it. We’d already done all we needed to do today.

“ _Meu Deus, Polar_ ,” exclaimed _Tia_. She looked into my eyes. They were a little bit teary. Hers, I mean. And mine. Ours, then. All the eyes in the room were teary. She put her hand on my cheek. It was surprisingly soft. And definitely small. That said, she could barely reach my face so it wasn’t really a surprise that she had small hands. “ _Acalme-se._ ” She wanted me to calm down.  _Not as easy as it sounds_ , I thought. 

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four,…._

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four…_

“ _Polar_ ,” she said, this time slowly and, though she still had that twinkle in her eye, she was about to be nicer to me than originally planned. “Octavio and I…you know you’re family, _n’é?_ ”

I didn’t speak. 

Too choked up.

She nodded briskly and repeatedly, with her hand still on my cheek (now it was hot), and said, “ _Querido_ , be happy. For whatever it’s worth. We approve. _Bao_. You should know that Luis and some of the others have made everyone sit down in a circle to play this game with presents. What’s it called?”

I groaned, “Pass the parcel. It’s a…eh…his idea.” Someone from the other room gripped, _that’s a weird ass thing to make a present out of_. This was followed by some emphatic shushing and a few titters. “They started without me?”

“Well, he thought you might lose your nerve.”

Blood rose to my face and filled with enough pressure to burst.

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four,…._

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four…_

I was sweating.

Beto ran into the room, “ _Polar_ , are you coming or what? This is like your big moment.”

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four…_

He looked at me like horns had sprouted out of my head. “Shit. You’re freaked out, aren’t you?”

I gasped, tried to catch my breath (I failed), covered my eyes with the base of my palms, and thought, _what did I get myself into?_ There was more cheering from the other room. It was followed by the sound of more paper ripping and someone who said, _These magazines are ancient, man. Where’d you find them?_ I could picture the pair of them. They were different publications but had the same topic on the front cover. We found them at the bottom of a box near the back of the largest thrift store on University Avenue.

 _Tia_ rubbed my back while Beto said, “Dude. You’re some big ass lawyer who can get in front of a room of scary ass strangers and take them down. This is nothing.” Then he thought about it. “Okay, it’s not _nothing_ but you got this. Remember how you said that to me? I was scared as shit but you just kept telling me that. You got this. I had such a hard time believing you but…I could tell you believed it. So, now I’m going to do the same for you. Get out there and do your thing, man.”

I pulled him into a big ol’ stress-sweaty hug. He awkwardly slapped my shoulder and told me, “It’s okay, big guy. Come on. You got to get out there.”

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four…_

I nodded and wiped my face. Then I nipped into the bathroom to throw some water on me. _Calm down, man._

By the time I got to circle where the game was played, the room was alight in laughter. Raul was on Dante’s lap with his legs dangling down. In his hands was a jar of amber fluid. That meant the game was almost over.

“Stop!” shouted Luis, pointing to _Mestre_ ( _Of all the people, Luis. Really?_ ) who unwrapped the picture frame and exploded with laughter. I knew because after Luis found it, I had to explain what it meant. The photo itself was of some vintage car from the fifties; the important part is that it had a guy’s ass hanging out of the passenger side window.

The parcel was going around the circle again. It passed Dante once but on the second time, _boom_ , it stopped with him, exactly as planned. He handed it to Raul to unwrap but Raul, being Raul, who normally would have taken and unwrapped it, pushed back with one hand and said, “You do this one.”

“Huh. Okay,” he conceded and dipped his head toward Raul while making eye contact with me as if to say, _What’s up with this guy?_

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four,…._

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four…_

The last _present_ was an envelope. Inside was a pencil and a drawing (done by Raul) of a guy with my coloring and a giant speech bubble with instructions (written by Luis) and read aloud by Dante: “ _To learn the secret message, line up all the presents in the order they were opened. Guess what the words mean one at a time and fill them into the blanks below.”_

At the bottom of the page were eight blanks, the last two of which were hyphenated to indicate that two clues made up a single word. Dante looked around the room at the odd collection of presents that people had unwrapped and pointed at the first one. It would be memorable: A (now wilted) head of Romaine lettuce. “ _Alface_?” he asked.

Luis corrected him, “It’s gotta be in English, _Palhaço,_ or else it doesn’t work.”

Dante squinted one eye shut, wrinkled his nose and bit down on one side of his lip, leaving the other side to curl up and expose a few of his teeth. “Romaine? Like…something Roman?”

“Dude. Don’t try so hard.”

Raul whispered something in his ear and he repeated it, “Salad.”

“No,” said Luis and Raul pouted.

“Lettuce?”

“Yes! That’s right,” announced Luis, sounding scholarly. Or, perhaps, like a game-show host. “That goes on the first blank.”

“Okay,” Dante said and, to the frustration of everyone else in the room, helped Raul write the word on the back of the page since there was no way Raul’s handwriting would have the word fit into the blank that was given. “What’s the next one?”

Dante pointed to the Christmas ornament shaped like a tuba but the temporary owner shook their head at him. That was the third clue, not the second one. He swept the circle again to identify the card game Go Fish with each “fish” taped over with masking tape. “Go?”

“Correct!”

“Lettuce and go. This means _Let’s go_?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, okay. I get it now. The next one is that one there…it’s a tuba, yes?” 

I wasn’t sure if he noticed that the entire room nodded their heads along with him. Bernie looked back at me and winked. Bea sent a surreptitious smile and went back to chatting with Stella.

“Let’s go…tuba. Is that right?”

“Yes. Now you need to go to the next one.” Someone had mounted it like a prized butterfly in a picture box. He guessed correctly, “A leaf.”

“Yup. Next.” 

The house number in black was easy, “Four.” And he went through the set of clues to see what he knew so far, “ So far I have Let’s go…tuba leaf four…” He repeated it and repeated it again. Then he beamed, caught on that _tuba_ was meant to be broken up, and looked at me sideways, “Let’s go to Bali for….”

Then came the magazines, each with 60 Minutes on the cover. That was the longest for him to get, though as soon as he said in the sentence, moving from _hour_ to _our_ made sense to him.

The last two: a jar of honey and the photo in _Mestre’s_ hand. I didn’t know if he’d understand the reference of mooning someone (he didn’t) but as soon as he got to the honey part, the rest was easy enough to guess. “You wanna go to Bali for our honeymoon?” his voice was high, almost breaking, when he asked the question.

I nodded.

My feet shuffled toward Dante and, though my eyes never lost sight of him, I became aware of the presence of others in the room. Seth reached his hand out — when did he get here? — and helped Raul slide off Dante’s lap.

Rory held his daughter, Andi, and turned her so she could see what was happening.

 _Mestre_ stood with his arms cross, and legs planted firmly, face pulled in a bad-ass frown that, to anyone that knew him, was a face that dared people to have a problem with anything going on right now. Not that they did. It was just his way of letting us know how he felt.

Bea cuddled up to Marky and, in a rare display of affection (our _Amante_ was named _lover_ much like big guys were named Tiny), he let her.

Richard stood against the wall closest to the door. He held Danny, whose medical bracelet glimmered just outside of the large knot comprised of their four hands.

 _Tia_ was crying, which upset both Lina and Pete who were trying to alternately hugging a leg and patting her hair to make her feel better.

Beto urged me forward with an impatient shoo with his hands.

With my family around me, I got down on one knee.

And promptly forgot everything that I was going to say.

The room swam.

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four,…._

There was a thing I was going to say about how he’d always been the one for me, how he made be a better person, and…well…it was filled with all _very me_ things to say. Very thorough. I had agonized over them for days.

_Please don’t faint, Micah._

It would have only been the second time in my life but, honestly, once was enough. Luis found his way into my field of vision and mimed fishing something out of his pocket.

 _The ring_. Yes, that would be a good start.

“Dante,” I squeaked then I cleared my throat and began again, “Dante.” Okay, that was better. I got his name out. His name was Dante and, “You are going to have to trust that I had a speech.”

“Uh huh,” he beamed.

“You know how you told me that everything that happens once can never happen again?”

“I remember.”

“Well, I just want you to know that…um…maybe this is something that can happen just the once? Because…I mean…I would do it again and everything…but …you know…there are a handful of things that I like the idea of doing just the once. Like…this.”

“Like this?”

I took a deep breath.

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four,…._

_Words, Micah. Use your words._

“Dante, there aren’t words to express how much I love you. There isn’t anyone who has come up with anything close — and believe me, I’ve looked!”

He made some sound, an _mmm_ , an acknowledgment, to let me know — as he did — that he listened. Then he waited. He was patient because he knew I wasn’t done. I would get there. I just needed a bit more time. As I did. Almost always.

“There are no poems, no quotes, no stories that say exactly how I feel. Or how much I want you in my life — to come home to you every night and wake up with you every morning. Or how I want to learn how to care for you in all the ways you care for me. Or how much I want to deserve you. The words for these things simply don’t exist. So, all I can do is to come to you like this — on one knee — to tell you that I very much want to be your husband. And I want you to be mine, too.”

_Exhale._

_One, two, three, four….an eternity._ That’s how long it would take for me to go over this cliff. But I could do it. I would do it. It was just a fucking question. Biggest risk of my life. But the reward? Him.

And he was worth it.

So.

Here it was.

“Dante Te Waero, will you marry me?”

There was the flicker.

The troublemaker.

He was deciding whether he should give me a hard time or not.

Oh, god.

Not now.

Please don’t.

Just say yes.

I want you to say yes.

I’ll give you anything.

Everything, in fact.

All the everythings.

Just say it.

Then he did.

“Yes, _Tico_ ,” he said and helped me slip the ring onto his finger before he gathered me up, lifted me with his arms under mine, and stood up with my arms now slung around his shoulders. He kissed me with the force of a thousand kisses and would have dipped me backward had someone around us not called out for a group hug over the applause.

Someone small grabbed one leg. Someone larger grabbed my waist. Another someone laughed hot air onto my neck while someone else held my hand. Between all the someones, we were surrounded. I was stuck. I might never be able to let go.

But that was okay.

I didn’t want to.


	4. Chapter 4

_Tia_ and _Mestre_ danced a different sort of samba. Unlike the young couples whose feet flew and whose hips gyrated, whose hair swung and whose skin glistened in the early desert evening, the older couple had an efficiency in movement, as intimate as it was concise. They required no feathers or fantasy. No g-strings, no gemstones, nor any grandstanding. They needn’t wait for carnival. Nor did their shuffle evoke it. Even music was optional. They carried their own and sang it to each other like a secret. And while every couple looked into each other’s eyes, theirs was their pair that neither needed nor invited attention from others.

Which was precisely why they got it.

“How long have they been together?” Seth asked from behind me and handed over an agua de jamaica while he took a swig of a beer from a dark brown bottle. Something was up with him. My brother had taken a job in Minnesota not two months ago and, when we spoke earlier this week, there was no way he’d be able to fly out on such short notice.

I answered him, “Something like thirty-five, forty years?” and thought for a moment about what to say when someone asked how long Dante and I were together. Where did I start? Way back when we met? When I was thirteen and it took all of my patience to get his name — his real one, not his _apelido_ — out of him. From the first moment, he was under my skin.

How about eight summers later? He showed me San Francisco and said he loved me. Of course, I loved him too. How could I not? To not include it would be a serious omission. Then again, whether I love him or not, my crush was real. He could do no wrong. Besides, to say that’s when we started would imply we’ve been together since that time. And, if I were to argue that we _started_ as soon as he’d had my heart, I’d have to cite the earlier of the two dates.

What if we started the clock when he came home the Mother’s Day before last? That was when he declared his intention. But that was only a _what if_. It didn’t turn to more until that winter when we decided to buy a house together. That was less than a year ago. Or when we moved in together? That was only months ago. But it changed something. That’s when we spoke for each other, made plans for each other, took each other’s presence for granted. We no longer had to ask whether one of us would be able to make it up to his or down to mine; we were at _ours._

Then again, today was the day I made my declaration. I proposed. He accepted. Which meant there was at least one more day ahead, one in which we exchanged our vows, our promises to keep for thirty, forty, fifty — so many years.

All of those days counted, as did all the days in between. Still, say someone asked me right now _Micah, how long have you and Dante been together_? I wouldn’t know. I wondered if Dante did. Even if he didn’t, he’d have something wonderful to say. I bet he’d say something like, _Tico, we’ve been together since before you were conceived, before my first sip of air, before the dinosaurs were extinct. We caused the Cambrian Explosion. Don’t you remember?_ That would mean we’d been together (and I can’t believe I knew this) five hundred forty one million years. It was a good number. Now that I had the answer, I couldn’t wait for someone to ask the question.

I caught sight of Dante who, from behind the barbecue where he tended the _costela de Ripa_ and _churrasco_ (including some skewers of _picanha_ liberated from a deep freeze _)_ , took a break from being entertained by Luis, Beto and K’von to flirt with me across the backyard.

Seth caught us. “Nice,” he smiled, which made me uncertain as to whether he spoke of me and my man or of our matriarch and hers _._

“So, how’d you get here?”

“Wow.”

“No, I don’t mean it like that. I’m so happy you are. Just…what happened?”

“Job interview.” He said it with such nonchalance that I knew it was a put-on.

“Get out.”

Now he smiled. It was a big one that went up to his eyes. “For real. I didn’t want to say because I didn’t know I’d get it.”

“Wait,” I said and shook my head quickly as the implication fell into place, “You got it?”

“I got it!”

“You’re going to be here?”

“I am.”

“ _Here?_ ”

“Here, man. Yeah. I’m moving back.”

I pulled him into a hug so tight as to elicit a grunt and said, “Holy shit!”

He chuckled, “I know. The second they asked me, I called and gave notice. What was I thinking moving so far away?”

“You’re going to be here.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Here_.” Did I give a shit that I was repeating myself? No. My brother was moving back. “Where are you going to live?”

“So, about that…”

“You need a place? You want to stay with us?”

“Maybe but…”

“We got rooms. All we have to do is change the sheets. Oh, my god. I can’t believe you’re going to be here.” Seth and I haven’t lived together since I was sixteen and he was thirteen and, even before then, the years before he went to live with dad were all over the place. “Dude, you can stay for however you need.”

“Yeah, I appreciate…”

“I can’t believe you’re going to be here.”

“Dude.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up a second,” he snapped, fed up with my babbling when all he wanted to do was to answer my question. “I’d like to take you up on that. But what I really wanted to know is how you might feel about having me as a neighbor?”

“What?” We were the first house on the block so there was only the house just up the hill; there was no sign of them moving. Unless he meant…

“Your old place. Danny’s place. I’ve always liked it and he mentioned that he could use the money…”

Blood drained from the whole of my body, the immediate lack of which made it impossible for me to move from the very spot I stood. Still, I scanned the party, now aware that I haven’t spent nearly enough time with my bestie. Danny was easily spotted thanks to his partner Richard, the six-foot-infinity tall drink of a man who was, as usual, glued to his side, adoring him in some new way.

With no small urgency, I asked my brother, “Why? What did he tell you?” The two men were dancing, hand-in-hand, Danny’s medical bracelet shiny amongst the stack of bracelets he wore when we went out. He looked happy. They both did. More importantly, he looked healthy. His hair was shiny, his skin plump, his weight healthy. Nothing to suggest a relapse. I’ve been with him through two, neither was as bad as the first time.Both times — three if you count the first time — required enough scrambling to make sure bills were paid that he almost had to sell is only asset at the time: his house.

When Danny showed up in San Francisco with  Júnior and Bernadette — unannounced, mind you — he knew he was sick. He just didn’t know how sick. But Júnior knew. Bernadette knew. And after one look, so did I. Which was why they insisted on getting him in front of me, even if they had to stop a dozen times along the way. At the time, there wasn’t one amongst the lot of us who had heard of Crohn’s disease. Or of the tremendous amount of pain it brought. And Danny, it was full blown. His shift we got back in time for? I worked it. Right after we took a taxi to the hospital where he stayed, got hydrated and was treated in time to prevent his colon from rupturing.

So. If Danny needed money, I went on high-alert.

Seth scratched his head and frowned to dig out the memory of what he’d been told, “He said something about expanding his operation to roast beans?”

_Oh, thank god._ Relief seeped from my lungs to my bones. I knew that. We just talked about it days ago. Danny had a business plan. My Danny (and he would always be my Danny). The same Danny who, once he had his GED, swore off all further education. The one who reluctantly signed up for some online business classes when the previous owner offered to sell him the shop. The one who, more recently, talked with Cassie — the queen of coffee kiosks — about her supply. And her interest in having a local roaster. And what if they used shade grown beans? And solar power for roasting?

This was good news. 

“So?” Seth reminded me of the question in the air.

“Huh?” Oh, yeah. The house. Seth, my brother, my neighbor. “Yeah. Yes. Great. Perfect. Oh, my god, man — absolutely. That would be the best.”

“What’s great-perfect-best?” asked Dante who slid his arm over my shoulder. The glint of a gold-rimmed black band caught my eye. I lifted his hand to kiss the flat of his fingers and was immediately rewarded with a kiss of his own to the side of my neck. 

“Seth is thinking about moving into the place behind us.”

“What? That’s great! You need help moving?” Does he ask about logistics? No. Do you have a job? No. It’s just an instant _yes_. Followed by, “ _Tico,_ we’re going to have family so close! I love it.” Not _you’re_ going to have family close by. _We’re_. Us. Our family. Who he addressed now, taking my drink out of my hand and handing it to my (our?) brother, “Seth, I beg your apologies but I need to dance with my husband.”

Next thing I knew, one arm was wrapped around my back, the other hand held mine in mid-air, and I was moved as if by magic to wherever he wanted me to go. This was something we had in common: Dancing was like breathing. But unlike me who often had to count my way through it, he made it effortless.

“You’re happy, baby?”

“Mm mmm. Happy upon happy. It multiplies too fast to count,” he said. “You?”

I was one big glowing pile of mush. “Very.”

True to his word, he taught me how to samba. What I didn’t expect (and should have) is that aside from some rudimentary _your foot goes here_ instructions on day one, he didn’t explain it. _That’s the fastest way to ruin a samba, tico. Don’t try to explain it. Don’t even try to do it. Just let it happen.. Your feet do that but only because your heart does this…and none of us…not even you…can tell a heart what to do._

This was accurate.

I could neither copy his steps or actively follow him. The only way it worked was if I let him lead. That didn’t mean I couldn’t spin _Tia_ around a bit. Or Stella or Bernie or Cassie Bea. Raul — well, I tried to teach him the dance. He would follow along for a while only to break into his own thing, twirling himself around and jigging a jig with unknown origins. Danny and I, on the other hand, would fight for the lead but could have a nice dance once we’d negotiated who was doing what. But with Dante, and only with Dante, I stopped anticipating what came next and, because I did, my feet knew exactly where they needed to be.

“Did you really not know I was going to ask you?”

“I really didn’t know.”

“Come on. You didn’t suspect something was up?”

“So nosy. If I say I didn’t know, you should trust that I didn’t know.”

“But you didn’t know _anything?_ ”

“Oh, my god. _Tico_ , you drive me crazy. I love surprises. You surprised me. It was perfect.”

“Why’d you say yes?”

“You don’t think I should have said yes?”

“I’m so glad you said yes. I know why I want to be with you but if I drive you so crazy, why do you want to be with me?”

He hated when I asked him questions like this. _Don’t make me explain, tico._ I could let him lead but I couldn’t change my nature. Not totally. So I wanted to hear him say it. Was that so wrong?

He was going to give in and this delighted me. Dante Te Waero held me in his arms, he moved his body against mine, he magically made my body move against his, he told me he loved me and that we would be married and now he would say why.

“How many reasons do you want?”

“All of them.”

“No, we don’t have time. Pick a number.”

We were side-by-side for a section of steps and then he swept me into him again, walked me backward into a pivot. “Five.”

“You’re so greedy. I’ll give you three.”

“But you asked.”

“Now it’s two.”

I shut my mouth. Clearly, if I said one more word, he’d only give me one reason and, even though it would be a good one, he was right about me. I was greedy.

He smiled. “Oh, good. You’re quiet now?

I tilted my head up with my lips pinched together, thus demonstrating my perfect silence.

“Reason one out of two. See? I can make a list, too. Okay. The first reason it is worth all the trouble to stay with you is…I should say something about blowjobs, shouldn’t I? They are really very good. Can I do that? Can that be my reason number one?”

I glared at him.

“No? Okay. Because your love is the fiercest kind of love. And it comes…hmmm…how do I say this? Ever since I’ve known you, there has been so much inside you that you’ve had to overcome. It’s not easy for you to find a friend or be open to someone. You fight it. But when you finally stop fighting yourself and you open up and decide that someone is on the same side as you, you fight for them. So, maybe for someone who finds people easily, it isn’t such a big deal to them. But because you have to overcome so much to let someone it, everything is a big deal. I like this. I like this intensity. I like that you love me with such strength not because it is easy for you but precisely because it scares you so much. And you do it anyway. So imagine being the person who has your affection, _tico_. No one else has anything like it. That makes me special, yes?”

“So, that’s what I should be thinking when you tell me I’m being difficult?”

“Maybe you can think of this in the back of your mind but if I’m telling you that you’re being difficult, you should focus on why I’m telling you that you’re difficult.” He brought his forehead close to mine and said the next part in a low voice, “That means, no —you don’t get a free pass.”

“Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“Of course not.”

“And the second thing?”

“The second thing…well, this is something related to the first thing but a little bit different.”

“Uh huh.” He had a look in his eye now. _That_ look. The one where he was going to outsmart me. I no longer needed two reasons. One was great. In fact, it was really nice. So nice, I didn’t need a second reason at all. But before I could tell him so, he started to speak.

“I think,” he started magnanimously, “that you are also one of these very smart men who now only admits he is wrong — and I mean when he is, of course — and is also wise enough to realize when he should give something — a person or maybe a situation —a second chance.”

What was I wrong about? Had I done something I wasn’t aware of? Maybe he meant the proposal thing. I could admit that perhaps I waited longer than I needed to. I just wanted to be sure. It wasn’t like I was going to let him get away or anything. Oh, god. Did I dare ask?

No. When in doubt. Postpone. For the most part, this was still a good rule for me. A go-to rule for discussions on life, especially when they involve my having to confront my shortcomings.

“For instance,” he said and kissed me, already countermanding my mentally invoked rule, which, knowing him, was on purpose. “What will I say to you tonight when, after I’ve made love to you? You’re in my arms and your eyes are closed and you do that thing where you think your last thoughts out loud before sleep takes you. You think I don’t know what you’re going to say to me? You’re going to say _Do you think that Luis and Raul are sleeping okay?_ ”

To be fair, it did sound like something I might say.

“And I’m supposed to know, _tico_ , because I know you and I know how you think that what you mean by that is that you already miss them.”

“Is that what I mean?” I ask, as though I had really asked the question he imagined me asking.

“Of course,” he said. “And tomorrow morning, you’ll grab too much bread to make too much toast. I bet you’ll even make sure the beds are made up just in case they need to visit soon.”

“What? No.” I answered. Then I came clean, “Raul and Luis already made up their beds for next time.”

“Uh huh. For next time. When is this _next time_ you speak of?”

“Dunno.”

“You don’t know? I see…” From waist up, Dante’s body was at rest. Even as his feet shuffled and twisted in pivots and struts at speed and, as such, he kissed me, calm and sweet as if we stood still. It was a kiss I recognized. The kiss told me that he would make love to me by patiently, tenderly searching for the hidden places he hadn’t yet found, hadn’t yet figured how I’d respond when he touched me in that place, in that way. I knew because he’d already started twining his fingers between the hair on my scalp, scraping experimentally around my nail beds, fingering the strip of skin behind my ear while he attuned himself to my reaction. “You know, _tico_ …you know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?”

Of course, I did. “You’re going to tell me that it doesn’t have to be this way.”

He whooped, “Clever you. Yes, that is exactly what I was going to say. And what do you want to do about this.”

Panic? No, postpone. Postpone, postpone, postpone. Let me have tonight without thinking more about it. “Ask me tomorrow.”

“You know what happens if I ask you tomorrow?”

“Nope. It is all one big mystery in my head. I need to think about it. That’s why I want to ask you tomorrow.”

“You believe that, do you?”

I knew what he was getting at. _Ask me tomorrow_ wasn’t code but it was getting there. Every time I said it — that I could think of anyway — I succumbed to whatever it was. If I couldn’t say _yes_ in that moment, I said _later_. And my _later_ was a _not no_. In other words, it was a _future yes_.

Damn.

Still, I didn’t have to let him know that I knew what he knew that I knew what he was getting at. These were my little wins. My lovely, heart-warming, fictitious little wins. “Yes, I believe it.”

“Uh huh.”

“Whatever. Do it anyway.”

“Well, okay. I will. After all, you _do_ like to surprise me.”

I smiled in victory while his had a false acquiescence. The false part made it no less charming. He had my number. All my numbers. I played along, “That’s true. And I know how much you like surprises.”

“Yes, _tico_. I do.”

 

 


End file.
